Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  Twenty-eight minutes later—rounded up, that’s five-tenths of a non-billable hour—Rep looked with satisfaction at aqua floorboards on which he could have walked barefoot and at a neatly rolled brown paper bag with BROKEN GLASS written on it in black Magic Marker. The cardboard he’d duct-taped to the window frame looked amateurish, but he’d just dictated a letter confirming American Family’s promise that someone who knew what he was doing would be out forthwith to improve on that effort.

  “This looks wonderful,” Key said, beaming, as she strode down the hallway from her bedroom, where she had been straightening up. “But you weren’t supposed to be doing any clean-up yourself.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Rep said. “In one sense cleaning up is about ninety percent of what lawyers do. Anyway, I had to do something to occupy myself while I waited for American Family’s adjuster to call back.”

  “You’re a peach,” Key said. She pecked him on the cheek. “Now we take care of your bill. I insist.”

  “Good idea,” Rep said.

  She led him past the flat’s cramped kitchen, back to her bedroom, which now looked ready for a Better Homes and Gardens photo op.

  “Has anything turned up missing?” Rep asked.

  “That’s a funny thing,” Key said. “Nothing valuable is gone, but he took one of my bricks.”

  “You mean the notes for a deposition you covered?” Rep asked, recognizing the professional jargon. “How in the world can you be sure that one of those is gone?”

  “You’re talking to Xu Ky’s daughter,” Key said. “If mom had been in charge of the Normandy invasion we would have captured St. Lo at H-Hour plus six. I got every one of those genes. I keep the notes for every deposition for two years, because once in a blue moon a lawyer squeaks about a supposed transcription error. I store them in chronological order. And between my Palm Pilot and my Daybook I can give you date, time, and office address for every gig I’ve had in the last thirty-six months.”

  “I see,” said Rep, who now understood why the cleansers in the kitchen utility closet had been arranged alphabetically—Ajax next to Bon Ami, followed by Formula 409 and, finally, Mister Clean. “So which notes were stolen?”

  “Guy named Roger Leopold,” she said. “Dep taken on November 10, 2003, in a case called Murphy Alpha Numerics v. Orlofsky Publications.”

  Roger Leopold, as in “the Leopold order”? Rep wondered, thinking of Polly Allbright’s enigmatic allusion after Rep’s eulogy. He inhaled sharply as an invisible little fist punched his diaphragm.

  “Can you dig up a copy of the transcript itself?” he asked.

  “I can try. I’ll call the office about it this afternoon. If they don’t have one, Walt Kuchinski might. He was local counsel in the case.”

  “Kuchinski?” Rep muttered. “That’s an interesting coincidence.”

  “Not really. He gets a lot of local counsel stuff in Milwaukee because he knows every judge in five counties. You want coincidence, I can do better than that. The lawyer who actually took Leopold’s deposition was Vance Hayes.”

  “You’re right,” Rep said, a bit weakly. “You win.”

  “Now, you’ve done a great job for me, and everyone in the Milwaukee County Courthouse is going to hear about it, so I want you to give me your bill and we’ll settle up.”

  “Right,” Rep said absently. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  Chapter 6

  Ninety percent of life is just showing up. Rep couldn’t remember who’d said that, but the longer MacKenzie Stewart talked the truer it seemed.

  All Rep had done was observe a basic professional courtesy. While driving back to the office he had left a voice-mail for Stewart about the weirdly intersecting coincidences tying Vance Hayes to Sue Key’s offbeat case. Just being polite. And now a new client was about to drop into his lap.

  “What in the world are you doing in Milwaukee, Reppert?” Stewart asked when he called Rep back about five minutes after Rep’s return.

  “Following the woman I love.”

  “Well, then, it looks like she’s a lucky charm for both of us.”

  “We’re in complete agreement,” Rep said judiciously. “But what are you talking about?”

  “You’ve met my wife, Gael, haven’t you?”

  “She and I shook hands a couple of times at bar functions when she was still general counsel for Pritzger Medical.”

  That is, Rep thought but didn’t say, before an assiduous, painstaking, years-long campaign by her husband turned Gael Cunningham-Stewart last year into the newest judge on the obscure but prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles patent and trademark cases.

  “Right,” Stewart said. “Well, during a recent spell of corporate absent-mindedness Pritzger managed to acquire a Wisconsin company called Precision Micro something-or-other. Pritzger’s hot-shot deal-makers have now discovered to their consternation that no one still at Precision Micro knows exactly how many registered trademarks the company holds or what countries they’re registered in or which of them are being licensed.”

  “They need an IP audit,” Rep said—figuratively reaching for his handkerchief, for drooling is an intellectual property lawyer’s Pavlovian response to the magic words “IP audit.”

  “Gael’s very term. Her replacement at Pritzger is still the new kid on the block, so he’s asked her to recommend outside counsel. My firm has an IP department, of course, but there’s the whole nepotism angle. Not that I have delusions of grandeur, but Caesar’s wife and all that.”

  “Just be careful on the ides of March.”

  “Quite. Anyhow, I told Gael that you could walk and chew gum at the same time and didn’t pad your bills. If you’ll fly to D.C. early next week so she can size you up for herself, I think she’ll be inclined to pass your name along.”

  “Just tell me when and where,” Rep said. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

  “If you have bells on they might not let you into the Yale Club. Best go for business non-casual. Say six-thirty or so on Tuesday?”

  “Done. Ken, I really appreciate this. Thank you very much.”

  “Not at all. And thank you for passing on the news about Hayes. Oddest client I’ve ever had. He baffles me even in death.”

  Not as much as he baffles me, Rep thought, hanging up and scribbling the appointment on a Post-It.

  He knew the next thing he should do was chat with Kuchinski about the testimony Roger Leopold had given in this very office almost two years before. But he found himself doing other things instead. Shuffling through his message slips. Checking for new emails. Thinking that, you know, when you get right down to it, if you really sort through all this Vance Hayes stuff—so what? Some eerie spasm of ancient history playing itself out in a broken window and some purloined paper—who cares? What could anyone today do about it except fix the window and call the insurance company?

  Yeah, I know: a rationalization, and a lame one at that. Rep just wanted Vance Hayes to rot politely in his grave without any more bother to anyone—especially Rep. The only thing worse than confronting Hayes in life was confronting him in death, and Rep didn’t like confrontation. Confrontation was for litigators, who came to work with their ankles taped and were always yelling into their phones, as if they weren’t clear on the basic concept of telephonic technology. It wasn’t for guys who’d been fifteen months old when their mothers were arrested.

  No one in Rep’s young life had ever talked about the arrest, or what came after. Not his father, who tried to raise him. Or his aunt, who did. Or anyone else. He hadn’t found out what had happened until he tracked it down himself in college. Only when he reached his thirties had Rep confirmed that his mother was still alive. Only then had he talked to her for the first time in his life—learning, in the process, that she made a living taking money from grown-ups to scold them and paddle them and stand them in the corner and turn them over her knee.

  Rep resign
edly watched his tidy little so-what excuse evaporate under the searing heat of traumatic memories. He remembered pelting down streets at the age of six or eight in small-town Indiana after strange women baffled to hear him yell, “Mommy! There’s Mommy!” No good trying to blow off the past. Not for him.

  Squaring his shoulders, Rep marched across the reception area to Kuchinski’s drafty, capacious file- and paper-strewn office. Kuchinski was leaning far back in his swivel chair, feet parked on his credenza, ankles crossed, hands clasped behind his head. Approaching the open door, Rep heard Kuchinski’s voice booming in the general direction of his speaker phone.

  “Can’t do it then, judge. Deer camp. They just had their second hard frost up north, and it isn’t mid-October yet.”

  “Oh,” came over the phone, as if “deer camp” automatically trumped speedy justice and efficient use of scarce judicial resources. “How about the week of February third, then?”

  Kuchinski flipped through a calendar, studied one page for half-a-second, then sent it spinning across the office like a rectangular Frisbee.

  “Can do,” he said. After similar syllables crackled over the speaker, presumably from his opposing counsel, he added, “Shall I draft the order, your Honor?…Will do. Thank you.”

  “Which brings us,” Rep said, “to Vance Hayes and Roger Leopold.”

  Kuchinski swiveled in his chair and looked blankly at Rep.

  “How does it bring us there?”

  “Well, it doesn’t, actually, but I couldn’t think of a segue. Do you remember Vance Hayes deposing a witness named Roger Leopold here in ’03?”

  “Very vaguely. Couldn’t tell you anything about it from memory.”

  “What are the chances of you still having a copy of the transcript?”

  “Let’s check the file room,” Kuchinski said, springing to his feet. “Remember the name of the case?”

  Astonished at the notion of Kuchinski’s highly improvisational office having anything as uptight as a formal file room, Rep shouted the case name while he scurried to catch up with the older lawyer. Kuchinski led him to an oversized walk-in closet. He pulled a chain to turn on a naked overhead bulb. The scant light disclosed banker’s boxes stacked six high and two deep all the way around the room.

  “I’ve been thinking of revising my document retention policy for about ten years,” Kuchinski said apologetically, “but I’ve never actually gotten around to it.”

  “Ten years should be just about what it would take us to find the case-file in here,” Rep said.

  “Us, maybe,” Kuchinski said, “but not Paris Hilton out there.” Pivoting and sticking his head through the doorway, he bellowed, “Hey! Princess Anastasia! Back here, on the double!”

  After seventy-five seconds of silence Kristina Mueller, Kuchinski’s red-headed receptionist/secretary/administrative assistant/office manager, strolled up to them at a sedate and unhurried pace.

  “You lose your key to the men’s room again?” she asked.

  Kuchinski gave her the case name and the datum that it had been active in 2003. She went instantly to the far corner, pulled three boxes down from the last stack of the front row and, resting one knee on the top remaining box in that row, began pulling a box from the middle of the rear row.

  “I thought the rear on that side was supposed to be for 1999 and earlier,” Kuchinski said.

  “You run the American legal system,” she snapped over her shoulder. “I’ll run the office.”

  Five seconds later a hefty banker’s box sailed toward them, landing neatly at Kuchinski’s feet and scattering sneeze-inducing dust in every direction. Kuchinski dug into it and promptly emerged with a fat brown file folder filled with thin, brown file jackets, each neatly labeled with the case name. He pawed through it impatiently.

  “No deposition transcripts,” he said in a puzzled tone.

  He pulled out the correspondence file and flicked through the pages. Pausing at the third letter from the top, he examined it intently.

  “I remember this now!” he said then. “Damnedest thing. Hayes takes the deposition, and the very next day I get a call that the case has been settled. Call the court reporter and cancel the transcript. Return the exhibits. Draft a stipulation.”

  “Do you remember anything about the deposition?” Rep asked.

  “I was just local counsel,” Kuchinski said, shaking his head. “I gave Hayes a place to sit and all the coffee he could drink and then went back to my office to do my own work.”

  “It sounds like there must have been a bombshell buried somewhere in Mr. Leopold’s testimony.”

  Rep then gave Kuchinski a brisk run-through, starting with Hayes’ death not long after the Leopold deposition and ending with someone stealing the Leopold deposition notes from Sue Key’s apartment a couple of hours before. He added the Leopold order (whatever that was) to the mix at the end.

  The story had its intriguing aspects, and Rep wasn’t surprised that it held Kuchinski’s interest. He wasn’t prepared, however, for the urgent intensity of Kuchinski’s reaction.

  “So the wild-card here,” Kuchinski said, “is the cat who took Sue Key’s picture and put it in that calendar.”

  “He does seem kind of hard to ignore,” Rep agreed. “But we don’t have any idea who he is.”

  “Not yet we don’t.”

  Kuchinski tramped out of the file room and back down the hall.

  “Did you clean up the mess?” Mueller asked, without looking up from her keyboard.

  “It’ll wait. Martha Stewart won’t be coming by today. Emergency meeting of the Brady Street Ski Club. Seven o’clock tonight, Art’s Performing Center. Send out an email, stat.”

  Rep retreated to his office. He often felt the need to catch his breath after a close encounter with Kuchinski, but this was different. One minute Kuchinski was lounging behind his desk, blowing off a trial date so he wouldn’t miss the start of deer season, and the next he was diving head first into a minor puzzle with the barest wisp of a tangential relationship to him.

  Either Walt had way too much caffeine this morning, or there’s something going on here that I don’t understand.

  Rep called his Indianapolis office and left a message instructing his secretary there to FedEx him the bundle of material he’d used to prepare his ill-starred eulogy of Vance Hayes—and while she was at it, to have someone dig up the probate report on Hayes’ estate.

  Chapter 7

  The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts sits in sleekly marbled elegance between Kilbourn Avenue and State Street in downtown Milwaukee, eminently convenient to Kuchinski’s suite in the Germania Building. The Brady Street Ski Club, however, met that evening not at the Performing Arts Center but two blocks north, at Art’s Performing Center. That establishment was neither sleek nor elegant but offered the advantage of permitting adults to smoke on the premises. (It would have permitted non-adults to do so as well if they were allowed in—which, however, they were not.)

  “Doctor and Mr. Pennyworth Esquire,” Kuchinski said shortly after seven o’clock, “it is my high honor and distinct privilege to introduce you to the Permanent Standing Committee of the Brady Street Ski Club, to-wit: myself; Rudy ‘Speedbump’ Markowski; Splinters Marcinski; Vince ‘Topper’ Topolewski; and our honorary member, Harry Skupnievich.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Splinters,’” Marcinski said from beneath a toupee of expensively woven silver-gray hair. “My mother calls me Leonard, and that should be good enough for anybody else.”

  “Splinters represents the only failure in my long career of getting colleagues elevated to the bench,” Kuchinski explained. “Through a mischance of malignant fate he was caught on videotape during the election campaign purloining his opponent’s yard signs—hence his nickname and his sensitivity about it. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel solemnly opined that these harmless shenanigans reflected poorly on his fitness to wield a gavel, and that proved to be a handicap that even my g
enius couldn’t overcome.”

  “Bastards,” Marcinski muttered.

  “Begging your pardon for the off-color language, Doctor Pennyworth,” Markowski said gallantly. “Splinters, watch your goddamn mouth.”

  “I’ve heard the term before,” Melissa said.

  “And now to work,” Kuchinski said. He launched into a succinct exposition of what he dubbed the Sue Key Calendar Problem. He had reached what Rep took to be the penultimate sentence and gotten as far as “… guy who took” when a healthy young lass who apparently could only afford halter tops one size too small appeared with a tray holding two pitchers of beer and a heaping platter of chicken wings. Kuchinski stopped speaking as his tablemates received the serving with sacramental reverence.

  “My compliments to the chef,” Skupnievich said, having already polished off one of the wings. “This is a lot better than the slop at the place you picked last time, Markowski.”

  “Bull,” Markowski protested. “Those ribs were done to a turn.”

  “True,” Skupnievich said. “They were done to the clubhouse turn at Hialeah. That was horsemeat, and I speak as someone whose great-grandfather served in the Polish cavalry.”

  “We need to find the guy who took the picture,” Kuchinski said, at last completing the sentence. “So how do we do that?”

  “He figures to be a free-lancer, right?” Topolewski said.

  “Someone who works at one of the studios, you think?” Markowski asked. “One of those outfits that does mostly weddings, with a little portrait business on the side?”

  This speculation provoked a comprehensive and highly analytical discussion of the professional photography business in Milwaukee, some of whose practitioners had had run-ins with the consumer protection authorities of what Marcinski called “the People’s Republic of Wisconsin.” Others focused (so to speak) on commercial art.

  “We’re not narrowing this down much,” Kuchinski said.

  “We’re going at it backwards,” Markowski said. “We should be thinking about the people in front of the camera instead of the guy behind it.”